A soap opera on CBS about an affluent family may be the first daytime drama with a predominantly black cast in many years. The Gates is a project that chronicles the life of a wealthy black family in a gated community. A CBS Studios/NAACP production venture in association with P&G Studios, a Procter & Gamble business, will produce the program.
Emmy-winning daytime television veteran Michele Val Jean (The Bold and the Beautiful) will write and showrun The Gates. In addition, Val Jean has penned almost 2,000 daytime television episodes. The final black daytime soap opera was NBC’s brief series Generations, a half-hour drama that debuted in 1989 and was supposedly the first in history to feature a black family at its core.
Additionally, several people considered Fox’s popular drama Empire from 2015—which aired during primetime—to be a soap opera. Any new daytime soap opera would end a decades-long tradition, as the genre has become less popular due to streaming competition and falling viewership. CBS last produced a new soap opera in 1987 with The Bold and the Beautiful, while NBC last premiered a new soap opera, Passions, in 1999.
The Young & the Restless, Bold & the Beautiful, and General Hospital (with Days of Our Lives on Peacock) are the only three daytime soap operas still in production. ABC canceled the long-running soap operas All My Children and One Life to Live in 2011, which attracted media attention. Prospect Park attempted to republish the soap operas online two years later. However, CBS recently gave the 51-year-old Young & the Restless a four-year renewal.
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